Skylark and the Duck

That's it. Waltz. You're writing a a story about Skylark Xavier Chesterton VII, and it better be awesome. And hilarious. And include a duck somewhere. –PuppyTales


"MUHUHAHAHAHAHA!"

Skylark Xavier Chesterton VII threw his head back and laughed at the ceiling. There was nothing particularly funny about the ceiling; it was merely what he happened to be looking at after he threw his head back.

“Eureka!” he shouted, throwing his hands up in the air. After all that throwing of body parts, he paused for a moment to collect himself, then laughed again.

“I’ve done it!” he repeated (albeit in English this time) as he rubbed his hands together. “Finally, after all these years of work, I’ve proven that it’s possible – that through the miracle of SCIENCE, we can now travel…”

Skylark Xavier Chesterton VII paused to savor the moment, then crossed his wrists in front of him, index and pinky fingers extended.

“…through TIME!”

The words echoed from the walls of his laboratory. He coughed, suddenly feeling silly. After all, there was no one in the vicinity to hear him.

Chesterton – or “Sky” to his friends, back when he had some – ran his hands over the tangle of copper tubing that adorned one side of his time machine, and spoke in a softer voice. A reverent voice. A whisper, really. “Yes. Yes, my precious.” He pressed his face against the smooth metal, spreading his arms wide as if to embrace the complex vessel. “Time itself is open to us now. The vast, empty corridors of history… and prehistory… and the future… all the way back to the beginning. At last. At last.”

He sprung back, thrusting a finger into the air. “A test! Yes! We must conduct a test on a vict- er, a volunteer before proceeding with the journey. Not!” he emphasized with a poke in the general direction of the still-unfunny ceiling, “that there’s any reason to doubt that it will be anything but a resounding success!”

He stepped over and around various devices, electronics, wheels, dials, wires, and alembics – though there was no discernible purpose for an alembic in time travel, Chesterton considered it an essential part of any mad scientist’s laboratory – and threw the door open, sprinting up the stairs.

Chesterton opened the front door and squinted in the sudden brightness. “What in the name of science is… oh, the sun. I almost forgot.” He shaded his eyes and looked around. The secluded valley in which he conducted his experiments (after having been forced to relocate there from the suburbs due to an unfortunate incident involving a helicopter, a penguin, and the neighbor’s daughter’s best brassiere, about which the less said the better) stood quiet under the noonday sun. Birds chirped in the nearby trees. Grasshoppers frolicked in the unmowed grass. At the edge of a quiet pond, a duck floated.

Chesterton scampered back into the house and out the back door, which opened onto a porch even more cluttered than the basement laboratory. Rakes, scythes, snow shovels and other unused tools clattered onto the floor as he pulled an ancient fishing net from its place on the wall.

He closed the front door with great caution and, net gripped in both white-knuckled hands, tiptoed down the path to the pond. The duck, a magnificent mallard male, turned one eye toward him and edged away. Chesterton swept the net behind his back and paused, whistling innocently.

The duck stopped moving. Chesterton resumed his advance, net once more in front of him, moving slowly and almost quietly. Closer and closer he crept to the edge of the pond, eyes fixed on the colorful waterfowl.

At the water’s edge, he flew into motion, swinging the net in a long arc across the surface of the pond. The duck released a startled QUACK and opened his wings to take off, but the jumpy scientist was too fast; in a flash, he had one fist around the net, having trapped the squirming, flapping duck.

“Aha! There you are, my friend! You don’t know it, but you’re about to make history – by becoming history!”

“Quack!” said the duck.

Soon enough, the duck was glaring angrily at Chesterton from within the spherical glass front of the time machine, as the scientist went through the long, involved startup process. He took an occasional break from angry-glaring to smooth feathers ruffled from his capture, afterwards releasing another quack of resentment before settling back to the angry glare.

The machine wheezed to life, chuckling and belching steam into the close confines of the laboratory (Chesterton was a huge fan of the steampunk genre of literary fiction, and always did his best to make his inventions conform to that aesthetic).

“Now, my little feathered friend, are you ready to go on the journey of your pathetic little life?”

“Quack!”

“If my calculations are correct, you’ll go back seventy-five million years! To the time of the dinosaurs! You might even get to meet your own great-to-the-great-power ancestor! Think of that!”

“Quack?”

“And of course, my calculations are correct. My calculations are always correct!”

Chesterton threw a giant switch and the time machine disappeared in a crackle of lightning.

“YES! Muhuhaha- wait. Why didn’t I think to put a video camera in there to record this historic moment? Dammit! I’m going to have to run the experiment all over again!”

He threw the switch back and with a snap, crackle, and POP of displaced air, the time machine reappeared in its accustomed place, steam billowing from its tubes.

Something moved within.

The glass bubble of the time machine burst into a million shards. Chesterton threw his arm up to protect his face from flying glass.

“Mistake, Chesterton,” came a deep voice from within.

“What? Who?” He squinted into the shadow. The shadow moved. A large scaly thing with a mouth full of teeth and tiny, beady eyes emerged and advanced upon the scientist.

“Turns out that your little time machine works – after a fashion.”

“Who – what are you?”

“I’ll give you a hint.” It advanced upon the terrified scientist, who knocked the alembic to the floor in a rush to get away from the terrible beast. “QUACK,” it roared, bathing Chesterton in hot breath.

“You see, doctor, you did, in fact, make a mistake in your calculations. You sent my pathetic little body back seventy-five million years – but you sent its evolution back, as well. The form you see before you now is that of the dinosaur that we ducks were before that… inconvenient asteroid impact.”

“But… but…”

“My mind, however, got sent seventy-five million years… into the FUTURE.”

“No! It can’t be!”

“Oh, but it can. You see, seventy-five million years from now, ducks have developed intelligence. Yes, indeed, we will rule this world seventy-five million years from now.”

Chesterton cringed as rows and rows of sharp, pointy teeth grinned at him at close range. A scaly claw wrapped itself around his windpipe. Chesterton tried to speak, but was reduced to choking sounds that were eerily similar to quacks.

“It’s just too bad you hairless apes won’t be around to see it.”